Worcester shines through in edgy and artful 'American Hustle'

"American Hustle" opens with the disclaimer, "Some of this actually happened."

The filmmakers could have easily said, "Some of this actually happened in Worcester."

Back in April, if you saw Batman with a bad comb-over, Superman's girlfriend wearing a party dress with a plungy neckline and one of "The Hangover" guys sporting a perm straight out of "The Brady Bunch" all walking together down Main Street, or "The Avenger's" Hawkeye with a pompadour and a polyester suit pontificating about urban renewal on Millbury Street, rest assured, your eyes weren't playing tricks on you.

Those scenes and many others are featured in "American Hustle" (which opened locally Thursday).

While it's not the first film to be shot in Worcester in recent years, it is easily the best. And Worcester has never looked so cool on the big screen, so much so the movie could be redubbed "Seven Hills Hustle." Sometimes gritty, sometimes zany, always entertaining, "American Hustle" is Worcester's proudest moment on screen to date.

The movie has it all: quirky characters, cool music, killer lines, over-the-top '70s clothes, as well as crosses, double-crosses, combustible love triangles and a chilling Robert De Niro cameo that, alone, is worth the price of admission. All of it makes you shudder to think what "Shutter Island" could have done for movie making in the city if state officials allowed Martin Scorsese to film at the old Worcester State Hospital.

While Jennifer Lawrence (whose character in the film is aptly described as "the Picasso of passive aggressive karate") steals the show, it's the Worcester locales that people around these parts will be buzzing about. Even some of the dialogue sounds like quintessential Worcester, for example, "Am I living in a (expletive) nightmare right now" and "You're freaking me out." (The film is rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content and brief violence.)

The film was directed by David O. Russell, who also directed "The Fighter" and "Silver Linings Playbook" (which was based on a novel by Holden author Matthew Quick). "American Hustle" is loosely inspired by the ABSCAM scandal in the late '70s and early '80s. But if you're not familiar with ABSCAM or even the '70s, you won't have any problem enjoying this flick.

"You go to Worcester," Russell was quoted as saying in a Boston Globe article. "What else looks like the '70s like that? It's hard to find actual streets that look like the '70s. To me, it's a gold mine."

Bradley Cooper, giving his best performance to date, is gung-ho FBI agent/conflicted mama's boy Richie DiMaso, who is wrestling with serious anger, trust, self-esteem, relationship and aquarium maintenance issues. To move up the bureau ladder, DiMaso sets out to bring down a few corrupt and easily corruptible politicians, including New Jersey Mayor Carmine Polito (played by Jeremy Renner).

Lawrence plays Bale's wife and the movie's wildcard whose heavy-scrubbing, housecleaning obsessed, Playtex Glove-wearing rendition of Paul McCartney and Wings' "Live and Let Die" will make you never think of the song the same way ever again.

However, for Worcester movie lovers, "American Hustle" will become their Zapruder film, painstakingly going over frame-by-frame to pick out scenes filmed in the city. While some locales flash by quickly, others are so obvious that you feel that the Worcester Art Museum, the Worcester Memorial Auditorium, the Mid Town Mall, Nick's Bar and Restaurant and Union Station should all get a closing movie credit.

Worcester first comes into prominence at the seven-minute mark, when Bale's character reminiscences about the catalyst that made him a con artist in the first place.

"I learned how to survive when I was a kid," Bale's character says in a voiceover as a "Young Ira" (Zachariah Supka) smashes storefront windows on none other than Millbury Street.

"My father had a glass business," the voiceover continues, as an actor playing Bale's father (circa 1940, in a flashback, also filmed on Millbury Street) is bullied by town thugs. "I would rather be on the taking side than the getting taken side any day of the week, especially after I saw how my father acted. And seeing that scarred me for life. Took it upon myself to drum up business."

The scene culminates with a crescendo of broken glass, all filmed on Millbury Street.

"I just had to get the timing right because of the explosives that were behind the window," 10-year-old Zachariah of Cotuit explained after a recent Boston screening of the film. "You had to time it correctly and you have to throw the correct way or everything will be wrong. I was throwing the rock but, at the same time, there was an explosion."

During the window smashing shoot on Millbury Street, there was a glitch with the impact of the rock and the actual explosion, so much so that some gawkers on the street started yelling, "Hey, let a Worcester kid show you how to break a window."

"The first time the wires were all mixed up but the second time I did it," Zachariah continued. "The scene that he zooms in on me, we had to do that about 10 times I would say."

Bale explains the art of the con in two back-to-back scenes filmed at the Worcester Art Museum, starting at the 34-minute mark.

In the first Worcester Art Museum scene, Bale sets up the initial scam with Cooper and a man who appears to be a sheik, as they admire the early 6th-century "Hunting Scene" mosaic that graces the main entrance floor.

The Antioch mosaic scene is followed by the already infamous scene in which Bale tells Cooper that the Rembrandt they are admiring is a fake and then asks the rhetorical question, "So who's the master, the painter or the forger?"

Despite Bale's convincing assertion, Allison Berkeley, manager of marketing and public relations at the Worcester Art Museum, insists the Rembrandt in their collection is indeed real.

Shortly after the Worcester Art Museum scenes, we are properly introduced to "the most quietly powerful person in the state of New Jersey," Mayor Carmine Polito (Renner), who is meeting and greeting constituents on the street — Millbury Street in Worcester, that is.

The actual filming of the scene was more elaborate than what made the final cut, with Renner talking to his entourage (including the director's son, Matthew Russell, playing one of the mayor's sons) how he's going to put New Jersey back on its feet.

The Carmine Polito montage also features a few shots of Renner inside the Worcester Auditorium. If you look closely, you can see the "Heart of the Commonwealth" seal off to the corner.

At the 54-minute mark, Bale, Lawrence, Renner and Elizabeth Rohm (playing Dolly Polito, the New Jersey mayor's wife) dine at Nick's Bar and Restaurant on Millbury Street, which has been transformed into "Baron's Italian Dining" for the film.

Also at Nick's, Lawrence insists Bale and Renner smell her nail polish (which she describes as having the scent of "flowers but with garbage") before the two men talk business and Lawrence becomes stumbling drunk.

At the 57-minute mark, Cooper and Adams are dressed for disco dancing and nightclub romancing as they clearly walk past the back entrance of Mid Town Mall on Mechanic Street. They are en route to Studio 54 (or what is actually the side door of Shack's, which was made to look like the famed disco hot spot for the shoot), but a shot of the famed disco fašade didn't make the film's final cut.

Across town, at the film's hour mark, Bale and Renner are seen belting out Tom Jones' "Delilah" back at Nick's, which is now made up to look like an unnamed men's social club in the film.

One of the pivotal scenes in the movie takes place at the 71-minute mark outside of Union Station when all the key players of the movie converge and, more importantly, Lawrence and Adams (aka her husband's mistress), finally lock eyes.

"I know who you are," Lawrence says while giving Adams an ice-cold stare.

Inside, wife and mistress eventually confront each other, but it appears the much-anticipated clash is not inside Union Station but Boston's Wang Theatre. Ah, the magic of movie making.

At the 87-minute mark, Bale is seen walking out of the front of Union Station, and not unlike many who have passed through these doors before him, wonders how he's going to get out of the mess he's in.

At the hour-and-55-minute mark, Bale, Adams and Cooper, all decked out in '70s couture, walk down to do their final con. But, the biggest con might be that the three actors are actually walking down Main Street, Worcester, past Walnut Street (with the Day Building in back), heading toward Harrington Corner.

In addition to Led Zeppelin's "Good Times, Bad Times" (which could be the official theme song of Worcester) that was prominently featured in the initial trailer, several scenes didn't make the cut, including a scene featuring a coat-clinging Cooper walking up Mechanic Street and passing the doorway of Shack's Clothing on Main Street, as well as Cooper throwing a man against a taxicab in the middle of Harrington Corner.

Can't wait for the director's cut.

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